~ "Start the ball, Tector."

Category Archives: World War II

I’m a great believer in the Law of Unintended Consequences. Things just happen that the planners don’t plan on. Sometimes those consequences are more dire than the problem deemed necessary to correct. Examples from history would include the World War that proceeded from the response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, or the rise of Organized Crime in the USA after the passage of the XVIII Amendment and the enforcing law, The Volstead Act.

Right now, refugees are flooding Western Europe and, to a lesser degree, North America, from the brutal wars in the Middle East, principally Syria. This has not been the only refugee crisis in recent history. After World War II, there were millions of refugees, Displaced Persons, in dire need of a new home and a new start. Present among the refugees, were the very persons who caused this humanitarian crisis, Nazi war criminals. They used the crisis they precipitated to escape justice, blending in with the refugees.

Fast forward to 11 May, 1960, when an automobile worker, walking home from his bus stop, is kidnapped in a Buenos Aires suburb. His identity card said he was Ricardo Klement, a German immigrant to Argentina. He was, in fact, Adolph Eichmann, an architect of The Final Solution, the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jewry. Eichmann and other Nazi war criminals used the refugee crisis to escape justice. His kidnappers were members of the Israeli security service, Mossad. They smuggled Eichmann out of Argentina on an El Al airliner to Israel where he was tried and executed for his war crimes.

Coincidentally, at the time of the Eichmann kidnapping, a young man was at seminary in Buenos Aires, studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood. His name was Jorge Maria Bergoglio. He was the son of an Italian immigrant, an anti-Fascist who fled from Mussolini, to the relative safety and freedom of Argentina. Today that young seminarian is Pope Francis.

The Holy Father is very familiar with the refugee problem.His personal experience informs him of who benefits from refuge granted. His upbringing in Argentina also tells him of those who exploited the plight of the refugee to avoid justice. Today a refugee, sadly, may not be an innocent fleeing a blood bath, but rather a criminal intent on perpetrating more violence. Good judgment on the part of Western governments is critical to protect their countries from those who wish it ill.

Of course, Popeye is a fictional character. How could he die in battle? Who died on this day in 1944 was Willard G. Bowsky. Willie Bowsky was born in 1907 to a Jewish father and Italian mother and grew up in the New York metropolitan area. He was a talented artist who found work in the Fleischer Studios, run by Max and Dave Fleischer. He drew Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, soon directing a team of animators. The Bowsky cartoons stand out from the ones done by the Seymour Kneitel team. The manic synergy between the action and the music characterizes his work.

Unlike the Warner Studios (Looney Tunes) or Disney, based in Hollywood, the Fleischer Studios operated in New York. There is a characteristically “urban” quality to the cartoons with street scenes and traffic commonplace. The Fleischer output was sold exclusively to Adolph Zukor’s Paramount Studios. They developed a patented technology that had the characters move on a three dimensional background that gave the cartoons a unique “depth”.

In the late Thirties, the Fleischer Studios relocated to Miami, Florida. The studio quickly fell on financial hard times, exacerbated by the expense of the move. Dave Fleischer, director of the cartoons and brother of Max Fleischer, President of the Studios had a falling out. The source of the friction was Dave’s affair with his secretary, which rankled the straight-laced Max. The studio went bankrupt in 1942, was absorbed into the Paramount organization and became known as Famous Studios. Shortly after this acquisition by Paramount, Willard Bowsky joined the Army. He was 35 years old. Most talented animators who enlisted in the Army readily found work producing cartoons for the war effort. Training films and propaganda to boost morale constituted most of their output.

Bowsky did not choose that route. He volunteered for combat duty, and was assigned to a reconnaissance unit attached to the 14th Armored Division. On this day in 1944, his unit encountered German forces near Barr, Bas-Rhin, France. Willard G Bowsky was killed in the ensuing fire fight. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He is interred at the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial.

Bowsky’s story stands out because he could have taken an easier way, but didn’t. Something to think about.